


Recreational Mathematics

by LokiOfSassgaard



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-30
Updated: 2010-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-28 20:59:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6344962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LokiOfSassgaard/pseuds/LokiOfSassgaard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original prompt: Sherlock starts panicking and to get him to calm down, someone drags him to the side and gives him a sequence of numbers (or some other pattern) and tells him to continue the pattern. Then another, and another, and so on until he can think straight and he's calm again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Recreational Mathematics

“Shut up!”

It was the fourth time in as many minutes that Sherlock had shouted at a completely silent room.

“Anderson, leave the building! Your deodorant is putting me off.”

Anderson snorted. “What?”

“Do it!”

Tap, tap, tap; Anderson’s ridiculous shoes as he walked across the tiled floor. Drip, drip, drip; leaky tap in the next room. Glare from the sunlight in through the window, reflecting off the television screen and giving the appearance of the blood on the walls being the wrong colour. Three bodies, two men, one woman, no murder weapon present, no sign of entry, only one body showing any signs of trauma, other two on opposite ends of the room, time of death all estimated four hours previous, no known enemies or outrageous debts, all from affluent backgrounds, doing well in school, off for the holidays, none of them lived at this address, none apparently involved with the other/s, neighbours playing musi c, loud, too much bass, other neighbour watching telly, Graham Norton, older female guest, younger female guest, younger male guest, dog outside, traffic, too close to the street, very thin walls, primarily students living nearby, neighbours would have been home, none heard anything, three bodies, no one heard anything, no sign of foul play beyond the one who had his skull smashed, no murder weapon…

“Shut up!” Sherlock grabbed his head as he stumbled backwards, hitting the wall and using it to control his descent to the ground. “Shut up!”

“Christ, where’s the bloody book?” Lestrade shouted at the other officers as he and John both rushed to Sherlock’s aid.

“Sherlock?” John asked tentatively, clicking his fingers in front of the other man’s face. It seemed to have no effect. “Sherlock?”

“Book!” Lestrade shouted again.

Donovan rushed over, throwing a small notebook at him, muttering something under her breath that sounded a lot like, ‘Freak.’

“He’s eaten today,” John said, trying to check Sherlock’s vitals. “Has he done this before?”

Lestrade flipped through the pages in the notebook. “Every now and again, yeah,” he said absently. “Luckily, my sister’s a maths teacher.”

If there was a sequitur in that, John could not divine it. He chose instead to ignore Lestrade and focused on Sherlock, finding the man’s glazed-over expression almost terrifying.

“Sherlock,” Lestrade said, reading over one of the pages in the notebook. “Six, nine, fifteen.”

Sherlock’s eyes flickered slightly.

“Six, nine, fifteen,” Lestrade repeated, with a bit more force behind it.

Sherlock started to speak several times before managing any sound. “T—Twenty-seven…Fif..fifty-one… ninety-nine.”

“Good,” said Lestrade.

John shot a curious glance between the two of them.

“All right,” Lestrade contin ued, keeping his voice low. “Four, seven, ten.”

Sherlock said nothing.

“Sixteen,” Lestrade prompted. After a few moments, he added, “Twenty.”

“Twenty-five,” Sherlock said, almost immediately.

“Good,” Lestrade repeated, looking down at his notebook. “Take it to a hundred.”

There was another pause while Sherlock ran over the sequence once more to himself. “Twenty-eight, twenty-nine, forty-one, forty-six, sixty-five…”

John listened, confused, as Sherlock recited seemingly random numbers that had no pattern that he could discern. But a glance in the notebook Lestrade held in his hands confirmed that whatever the next number in the sequence was meant to be, Sherlock knew it. He hadn’t missed a single one.

“Very good,” said Lestrade when Sherlock had reached 100, each number coming just a bit more easily than the one previous. He turned a page in the notebook. “Nine, fifty-seven, one-sixty-one, one-sev enty-seven.”

Another slight flicker in Sherlock’s eyes. “Two hundred fifteen, two hundred sixty-one, three hundred seventy-seven, five hundred sixty-seven.”

“How…?” John asked, but his question went ignored by everyone.

“Very good,” Lestrade praised. “Nine, fifteen, twenty-one, twenty-five,” he prompted.

“Thirty-three,” Sherlock started without hesitation, “eighty-one, ninety-nine, one hundred five, one hundred eleven, one hundred forty-one, one hundred sixty-nine, one hundred ninety-five, two hundred forty-one, there’s a bottle of Pepsi under the sofa, just there. Have it checked for poison. Thallium most likely. Suicide pact. No murder weapon because this wasn’t a murder. They administered the poison themselves, and the man with the smashed skull hadn’t anticipated the effects. He probably bled out from his injury, but the poison caused him to lose his balance and he hit his head on the edge of the table as he fell. ”

Sherlock jumped to his feet and rushed out of the small flat, shouting something about needing to be at Bart’s immediately, leaving John with a million questions, and not enough time to ask a single one of them.


End file.
